#blog12daysxmas Post 13 Epiphany

 

I don't usually do an Epiphany post to end #blog12daysxmas but this year I seem not really to have been very reflective about my 2013 challenges, nor to have documented the ones I have set myself for 2014.  So here goes!

Most years I do set myself some challenges which have arisen from my doing the original 23 things all those year ago in 2008. Some of them are challenges that I have done for years, and others are one offs. Read on to hear about my successes and failures in 2013, my learnings and my aims for 2014.

 Blogging
In 2013 I successfully completed #blog12daysxmas in January 2013, both for myself and for the Collingwood Historical Society. I finished it a couple of days late.  In June, I embarked less than satisfactorily in #blogjune for both myself and for the Collingwood Historical Society. That meant I was committing to doing 60 blogposts in June.  I must have been mad!  I have blogged about my madness here. In the end I managed to do 30 blogposts for the Collingwood Historical Society and 22 for myself.  So all up it wasn't too bad.

I maintain to a greater or lesser degree three blogs for myself and one for the Collingwood Historical Society.  The number of posts I did for each in 2013 are as follows:

Collingwood Historical Society 51 posts

Hecuba's Story 40 posts

Hecuba Reads 1 post

The Librarian & the Kitchen 4 posts

I was fairly pleased with the Collingwood Historical Society blog and amazed that with Hecuba's story I actually completed more blogposts than I had since 2009!  However, I am not so pleased with the others. In particular, more people actually read the Librarian and the Kitchen blog than anything else I write and people actually ask me when I am going to post something again.  I do create recipes, note them down on scraps of paper, take photos and them forget to write them up.I could definitely do better.

So, for 2014 what shall I do?  I have already completed #blog12daysxmas though only for myself. And as I am going to be away for part of June, I am not sure that #blogjune is going to be for me this year.  I regret that as I have been doing it ever since it started but sometimes things have to change.  I guess I will assess that as the time. And for the blogs, I am going to set myself some targets and see how I go.

Collingwood Historical Society 52 posts

Hecuba's Story 12 posts

Hecuba Reads 4 posts

The Librarian & the Kitchen 12 posts

#anz23mobilethings

I  started doing #anz23mobilethings enthusiastically when the program first started in May 2013.  I completed the first four things and then stopped.  My stopping seemed to relate to being overwhelmed with my over commitment to #blogjune but then I never went back to it.  However, I was determined to return to it during #blog12daysxmas, and I have now completed Thing 11.  I'm halfway there as Jan Holmquist supportively told me yesterday. I have committed to finish this in January 2014.  I am on a roll with it and enjoying doing it, so I believe I shall succeed.



Goodreads

In 2013 I made a modest commitment to reading 52 books in the year, i.e. an average of one a week.  I more than succeeded in this by reading or rereading more than 106 books. I document almost everything I read on Goodreads and will continue to do so in 2014 with a similar target of 52 books.  But I will try to review my reading a bit more during the year by blogging about it in Hecuba Reads (see above).







Flickr

In 2013, I took part in three Flickr challenges.  Two of them were 365 day challenges, the 2013 Photo a Day Challenge which I administer and the Happy365 challenge which Kathryn Greenhill set up.  I succeeded in doing 365 photos for both of these challenges.  I also took part in one 52 challenge, Friday Photos, a themed weekly challenge which I completed myself and which the Collingwood Historical Society completed with input from me and another member. 

In 2014 I am again participating in one 365 challenge, the 2014 Photo a Day which I am again administering, and in Challenge Friday, which is a follow on from Friday Photos in previous years.  Flickr itself set up a 52 challenge Friday Photos last year which lead to all sorts of confusion so ours has changed its name for the New Year.  The Collingwood Historical Society is also doing Challenge Friday.  I am up to date with all of these so far.  So far so good.

This all seems enough for me to do.  I will be interested to review it in twelve months.  What challenges have you set yourselves?  I'll be interested to read about them.

#blog12daysxmas Post 9 Yay for Helene Blowers!

Fox Hotel , Collingwood

Yes, I am behind again but I have two posts ready to do today.

On the ninth day of Christmas I had a wonderful social media inspired time at the Fox Hotel in Collingwood.  We were having a Melbourne Flickrup for members of the #2013PAD and #fp13 Flickr groups. My involvement in both of these groups started in late 2010 when I joined the #2011PAD along with Caroline Ramsden, the only other Australian in a group that we got involved in because of UK library Twitter friends.

Those of us who gathered were @emerald_j, me, Nicky from Civica, @birdsey7, @pru (a prospective member!), and Fiona and Terence who are fiant and their two children.  Unfortunately @csmramsden, @kat_frame, @bonitoclub and Pat M2007 all couldn't make it because of other commitments or last minute ill health. How amazing that we could have a face to face gathering with more than a couple of people!  That was unbelievable in 2010.

It was great to meet the people behind the photos and work out how we were all connected. We discovered that Fiona and Terence, the non library people in the gathering, had become involved via @csmramsden's daughter.  There were those of us there who reported that we were taught by @csmramsden's father in library school.  So now there is a hash tag on Twitter #ramsdengenerations! Unfortunately we were so interested in our face to face interactions that we forgot to take photos of the people.  But photos of the Fox Hotel were taken and posted on Flickr.

Fox Hotel, Collingwood

This probably sounds like a very personal little gathering of no interest to anyone else except a few Flickr geeks.  But I think it was a very significant gathering.  I joined Flickr as part of Thing 2 (I think - the number is the query not the process) in Helene Blowers' 23 Things when we did a Victoria wide roll out of it to all public libraries. And I am still there using it as an integral part of my life. A couple of others mentioned above did that Victorian 23 Things program too.  Many of us also started experimenting with a new thing called Twitter at that time and through it we made UK contacts and so the story goes on.  And we are still there enjoying our world wide networks.

All of the Melbourne people who are mentioned above have come together virtually and physically via various combinations of Twitter, Flickr and personal connections that can be traced back to several of us doing and embracing 23 Things as part of our lives.

So I say:  Yay for Helene Blowers!

#blog12daysxmas Post 1 Christmas Day technology

Christmas pudding H365/359 #happy365

Well here I am starting @blog12daysxmas late again.  It's Boxing Day in Melbourne and the first day of Christmas was yesterday.  So I am already in catch up mode. I realized today that my last blog post on this blog was for my not-fully-completed #blogjune challenge.  Oh well! I guess I just need a challenge to spur me along.

But technology and Web 2.0 were alive and well for me yesterday and show to me the importance of that 23 things program I did all those years ago. On Christmas Day, Twitter (actually my Echofon app) and Facebook and Flickr were all there with me at the beginning of the day as I greeted my online friends all over the world,  responded to their greetings and festive wishes, and looked at photos of their life at Christmas.

Xmas vegetables 365/359 #2013PAD

As with every day in 2013, on the first day of Christmas I posted photos on Flickr for my two daily 2013 photo challenges #2013PAD and Kathryn Greenhill's #happy365. I took the photos on my phone, uploaded them via my FlickStackr app, edited them via Aviary, edited them in the Flickr app, and duly added them to the appropriate groups.  Yes, I have done this for every day of 2013 up to day 359 which was Christmas Day, the first day of Christmas. 

I have illustrated this post with the photos I took for these two Flickr groups as a tangible illustration of the integral role technology plays in my life. It is very hard to remember a time when these tools were not part of my life.

A Reflection on #blogjune 2013 Post 22

Soooo tired 365/184 #2013PAD, a photo by Hecuba's Story on Flickr.

Well here I am nearly a week since the end of June finally reflecting on the failure that was my #blogjune.  But maybe with strict accuracy I should be fairer to myself and not say failure, but lack of complete success. Unlike the tired Xena above, I didn't spend June napping instead of blogjuning but here I am in July and for this blog, Hecuba's story, I only did eleven posts of the required 30 in June.  This was despite having mapped out and researched quite a few other posts including the two (or is it three?) posts/things I am behind with in #anz23mthings.

Oh dear!  Well maybe I just committed to more than I could achieve and should start thinking carefully about web 2.0 challenges I set myself. What are they and how am I going mid year?

I have two daily Flickr challenges (#2013PAD and #365happy) and two weekly Flickr challenges (#fp13 for both me and the Collingwood Historical Society). I am completely up to date in all four of them.  I should in all fairness admit here that another member of the Collingwood Historical Society helps with that Flickr #fp13 challenge. But still Big tick!

I signed up and committed to doing #anz23mthings and I was doing well until, well let's be frank about this, until I started doing #blogjune as well.  Or not keeping up with either of them.  However, I have been researching playing with apps and sites so it really isn't as bad as it looks. I will make a big effort and catch up with #anz23mthings by the end of next week.

 And #blogjune?  Well I committed to doing #blogjune for both this blog and for the Collingwood Historical Society blog. That meant 60 blogposts in the month of June.  I must have been mad.  By dint of a huge effort on 30 June (i.e. being tied to the computer for hours and doing 12 posts that day), I managed to complete #blogjune for the Collingwood Historical Society. Big tick! 

For this blog, I managed to complete eleven in June. This means that in June I competed a total of 41 blogposts.  So not so much failure as lack of complete success.  Earlier this morning I sat down to write this post as I was about to give up and say I had completed only eleven posts. But when I thought of the photos I had taken for posts and the drafts I had very loosely thought of, I flicked this post back into draft rather than publishing it and went back to review them.

Now hours later I am still sitting at my computer.  But I have published another ten #blogjune posts for better or for worse and I am feeling a lot better about #blogjune as this post will make post 22. I actually have scrappy notes about a few other posts too.  So maybe I will just try to finish the challenge even if I get it done by mid July.  And next year maybe I will think more carefully before I commit.

#blog12daysxmas Day 8 2013 Photo a Day Challenge

2013 Photo a Day Challenge, a group on Flickr.

Just a reminder that the@Flickr 2013 Photo a Day Challenge starts
tomorrow 1 Jan! 

Follow link to join up and start posting!